Ṭāhir Īshān’s Unknown Autograph Manuscripts

Abstract

The current article examines autograph manuscripts of three little-known Sufi doctrinal works of the eighteenth-century Central Asian Sufi, Ṭāhir Īshān, a native of Khwarazm. Ṭāhir Īshān is better known as the author of the eighteenth-century Naqshbandī hagiographical compendium Tadhkira-yi Ṭāhir Īshān, which was completed in 1160/1747. The works in question, entitled Ḥujjat al-sālikīn va rāḥat al-ṭālibīn, Rumūz al-kalām, and Risāla-yi sayr ilā Llāh, survived in their autograph copies in a single manuscript codex preserved at the Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies in Tashkent (Uzbekistan), under the inventory number of MS 5121. Given that the Rumūz al-kalām and Risāla-yi sayr ilā Llāh only survived in their autograph copies, MS 5121 serves as a crucial gateway to these doctrinal texts of Ṭāhir Īshān.